Earth Sciences, Geography & Environment Books
Princeton University Press A Place like No Other
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shortlisted for the Wildlife Publication Award in Biography/History of Wildlife Biology, The Wildlife Society""A keystone ecosystem provides lessons in how we can save the world from ourselves." * Kirkus Reviews *
£25.20
Princeton University Press Bees of the World
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Exploring bees though the eyes of melittologist Professor Laurence Packer in Bees of the World is an extravaganza of astounding photography and detailed accounts of the seven living species of bee known today."---Ann Chilcott, BeeListener"The book provides clear, accurate accounts of the seven bee families, presenting all the key information on generic bee characteristics, habits, and habitat, illustrated with lovely photographs that how bees in their natural habitats." * Pest Magazine *"This is a fine book, stacked with information, and it should be on the shelf of everyone who cherishes the natural world and its captivating diversity."---David M. Gascoigne, Travels With Birds"This is a delightful, handsome book to keep or give to another. It has already been tremendously useful to me (I’ll be citing it on many of my pages!), and I am sure it will be of great value and interest to many more bee enthusiasts all over the world."---Amanda Williams, Buzz About Bees"This is certainly no mere ‘coffee table book’ but I will thoroughly enjoy using spare moments to flick through the sumptuous photographs and expand my knowledge of these fascinating insects via the informative text."---Adrian Knowles, British Journal of Entomology and Natural History
£23.75
Princeton University Press The Deep Ocean
Book SynopsisTrade Review"I am at a loss for words to tell you how much I have appreciated this book."---David Gascoigne, Travels with Birds"The most fantastic book. . . . It’s really accessible, explains in really clear, clear detail how the oceans work, how they change, what real impacts the ocean can have in our lives, and overall it’s a fascinating read."---Ken Whelan, Mooney Goes Wild, RTÉ Radio 1"Time for a real coffee-table book, one to dip into whenever you feel like plunging far beyond where scuba can take you. This, like Inshore Fishes above, is an offering from Princeton University Press, which has form in producing attractively produced books for divers to enjoy. . . . [The authors’] tone is scientific but always accessible, so it depends on how much deep information you want or need – the contents feel comprehensive – but for many of us it’s the photography that will be the main attraction."---Steve Weinman, Divernet "Strikingly beautiful . . . . Packed with images and illustrations of the life found in this dark and cold environment. . . . Whether you just love the ocean and want to learn more, or whether you are a budding marine biologist, this is a book that you are going to want to add to your bookshelf."---Nick and Caroline Robertson-Brown, Scubaverse"[This book] dissipates ignorance with superb colour photographs of astonishing organisms."---Andrew Robinson, Nature"Any individual unfamiliar with, but interested in, the deep sea should meet no challenges in learning much from this book."---S.R. Fegley, Choice"A fascinating visual account of one of the planet's last great frontiers. . . . [It] reveals the amazing diversity of undersea organisms." * Outdoor Photography *""An outstanding book.""---Roy Stewart, British Naturalists Association"[A] must read."---Geoff Carpentier, North Durham Nature Newsletter
£32.30
Princeton University Press Global Warming Science
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This book and its associated materials provide an excellent pathway for developing a rigorous understanding of the challenges that human society is likely to face in coming decades."---I. D. Sasowsky, CHOICE
£44.20
Princeton University Press Natures Temples
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Maloof eloquently urges us to cherish the wildness of what little old-growth woodlands we have left. . . . Not only are they home to the richest diversity of creatures, but they work hard for humans too." * New York Times Book Review *"Joan Maloof is a powerful advocate for old-growth forests."---David Gascoigne, Travels with Birds"For anyone visiting the United States to see large trees in old-growth forests this book would be perfect to take along. . . . This revised and expanded book gives an excellent insight into both the flora and fauna within the forests, complimented by beautiful black and white illustrations."---Diane Farrar, British Naturalists Association
£15.29
Princeton University Press Climate Dynamics 2nd Edition
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£60.00
Princeton University Press The Spirit of Green
Book SynopsisTrade Review"William D. Nordhaus, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics""One of Foreign Affairs' Best Books""A Project Syndicate Commentators' Best Reads of the Year""Winner of the Silver Medal in Philanthropy / Nonprofit / Sustainability, Axiom Business Book Awards""A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""Nordhaus’s green compendium is rational and balanced. . . . The author of The Spirit of Green clearly cares intensely about the climate, believes economics offers answers, and sees some welcome positive trends."---Richard Beales, Reuters Breakingviews"A compelling read, and a highly recommended up-to-date guide to the economics of the environment and climate change."---Bejoy K. Thomas, Current Science"In this superb analysis, Nordhaus (Yale Univ.), Nobel laureate in economics, contends that addressing environmental problems should not inhibit economic growth. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *
£18.00
Princeton University Press Picture Ecology
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£34.20
Princeton University Press Tooth and Claw
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year""Every page-turn reveals beautiful photos and informative figures, making easy reading of diverse and fascinating material."---J. Burger, Choice"A good and well researched book that can bring us all new understanding to the importance of the role of predators in bringing a healthy ecosystem."---Steven Rutherford, British Naturalists Association
£32.30
Princeton University Press Foundations How the Built Environment Made
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shortlisted for the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain""Winner of the Historians of British Art Book Prize, Contemporary Subject""[A] brilliant new history. . . . A highly convincing book, with the sort of clarity and panoramic scope that is too often, in books on this subject, lost in architectural and decorative minutiae."---Owen Hatherley, Tribune Magazine"Elegantly written. . . . [A] timely contribution."---Alistair Fair, Architectural History"An academic modernist sees opportunity in disruption."---John Gapper, Financial Times"[A] scintillating and thoroughly engaging book, which rightly urges us to pay closer attention to the built environment in our understanding of how modern Britain came to be."---Phil Child, Journal of Contemporary History"Foundations is a fascinating contribution . . . illuminating fluently and engagingly the still-hidden history of the mundane spaces that Britons have inherited, many of which they continue to inhabit."---Simon Gunn, Journal of British Studies"An excellent book. It is deeply researched, thoughtfully argued, and beautifully written."---Erika Hanna, American Historical Review"Stimulating. . . . [Foundations] is an extraordinarily accomplished and engaging piece of work. It should be read by anyone working on modern Britain as well as those with more specialist interests."---William Whyte, Journal of Modern History
£19.80
Princeton University Press The Price of Collapse
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The Price of Collapse is a little gem."---Rana Mitter, Literary Review
£22.50
Princeton University Press When the Sahara Was Green
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Winner of the ASLI Choice Award, Atmospheric Science Librarians International""Winner of the PROSE Award in Earth Science, Association of American Publishers""Winner of the Special Book Award, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards""Winner of the Award of Excellence in Plants and Environmental Change, Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries""A detailed and authoritative account that reveals the rich and fascinating story of this unique landscape and its climate, geology and natural history. . . . Williams’s book offers a wonderful insight into how climate can transform the landscape across long stretches of time, as well as how delicately balanced are the ecosystems on which we depend."---P. D. Smith, The Guardian"This vivid historical survey by Earth scientist Martin Williams is the result of a lifetime’s work."---Andrew Robinson, Nature"Fascinating. . . . Engrossing. . . . When the Sahara Was Green covers the cyclical, gradual desiccation of the Sahara, the changing of its biomes, the nature of its current occupants, and even the question of its future. It’s formidably researched . . . but so warmly, approachably written that learning was never so pleasant."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review"Given Williams’s deep well of knowledge, this book could have been bogged down by technicalities and jargon. Instead, When the Sahara Was Green is admirably accessible to a broad audience with only basic knowledge of geography and earth sciences. Furthermore, the book stands out for the numerous clear and well-designed illustrations that explain complex concepts."---Leon Vlieger, Inquisitive Biologist"Highly accessible . . . and filled with interesting facts about geological history."---Nicole Barbaro, Bookmarked"[A] fascinating and informative introduction to the history of the Sahara, the past and present lifeforms it hosts, and its role in the wider planetary environment . . . Read this book and spread interest in Earth’s largest desert."---Jeffery Hirschy, H-Environment
£17.09
Princeton University Press Plankton
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£22.50
Princeton University Press Republics of Knowledge
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£22.50
University Press of Kansas Trees Shrubs and Woody Vines in Kansas
Book SynopsisExpanding and updating H.A. Stephens's 1969 classic, this handbook offers full descriptions of woody plant species found in the wild in Kansas, 138 of them native. County-level distribution maps show where species have been documented, and nearly 1,000 color photographs highlight morphological features - habit, bark, leaves, flowers, and fruit.Trade ReviewThe authors provide not only updated and detailed descriptions plus excellent color photos but also fascinating plant associations, such as using sand sagebrush as relief for intestinal ailments, and insect relationships, such as gall psyllids and hackberry. The organization and plant keys make available quick access to information about 166 Kansas species. A first-rate guide to the woody plants of Kansas!"" - Iralee Barnard, author of Field Guide to the Common Grasses of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska
£37.00
The Crowood Press Ltd Quantocks and North Somerset Coast
Book SynopsisWest Somerset is an area of great geological diversity, straddling the TeesExe Line between highland and lowland Britain. The story of the last 400 million years of Earth history can be gleaned from its rocks: the opening and closing of oceans, the collision of continents and a journey across the Equator. The area may also provide the key to settle the controversy about the origin of South-West England, whose ancient geology is so different from the rest of the country. This unique and diverse geology is also the reason why it is one of the most beautiful and varied stretches of landscape in England. With nearly 170 illustrations, including maps, charts, diagrams and colour photographs, this book describes and explains the evidence for the geological history of the area, from the Palaeozoic, through the Mesozoic to the Pleistocene and Holocene. Regional guides, which discuss the factors that led to the landscape we see today and offer places of interest to visit, cover: the Northern B
£16.14
Pluto Press Roads Runways and Resistance
Book SynopsisChronicling 30 years of public protest, government U-turns and environmental destruction, this is the story of Britain's transport policyTrade Review'Insightful and full of wonderful colour and incident - this is probably the best dissection of an 'environmental' movement that I have read' -- Charles Secrett, former head of Friends of the Earth England'As a movement for social change it is important that we understand our own history. This is a compelling read.' -- Gail Bradbrook, Co-Founder of Extinction Rebellion'Entertainingly lifts the lid on the real-world to-ing and fro-ing of policy making in what is often a hotly - and sometimes a bitterly - contested environment' -- Steve Gooding, Director of the RAC Foundation'I couldn't put it down until I'd read it right to the end. And even then I wanted more. It's fascinating, important, and very well-informed' -- Professor Phil Goodwin, Emeritus Professor of Transport Policy at UCLTable of ContentsPreface Timeline of Events List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements 1. The Biggest Road-Building Programme Since the Romans (1989–92) 2. Direct Action, Arrests and Unexplained Violence 3. The Newbury Bypass, Reclaim the Streets and ‘Swampy’ 4. The Biggest Hit on the Road Programme Since the Romans Left (1992–7) 5. Integrated Transport, the New Labour Ideal (1997–2000) 6. The Fuel Protests and their Aftermath 7. How Road Pricing Came to London – and Nowhere Else 8. Airport Expansion and Climate Change 9. The Campaign Against a Heathrow Third Runway 10. High-Speed Rail: False Starts and Big Decisions 11. HS2: ‘On Time and On Budget’ 12. Return to Road-building and Airport Expansion (2010–17) 13. The Climate Rebellion Begins 14. The Climate Emergency Changes the Transport World 15. Protest and the Limits to Growth of Transport – and Other Things Afterword Notes Index
£18.04
Pluto Press Just Transformations
Book SynopsisHow can societies be transformed in the interests of environmental sustainability from the ground up?Trade Review'A hugely important book, setting a radical agenda for societal transformation. Drawing on grassroots alternatives from across the world, the book offers a vital guide for both scholars and activists. Everyone committed to just transformations for sustainability should read this book now!' -- Ian Scoones, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex'A fantastic collection that illustrates that just transformations are already being imagined and implemented on the ground. The authors offer an important, creative example of genuine scholar-activism keenly focused issues of justice, power, and the transformative potential of EJ.' -- David Schlosberg, Professor of Environmental Politics and Director, Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney'A splendid collective book co-produced by an impressive international group of twenty-five socio-environmental academics and activists ... focusing both on the alternatives that are born from the resistance to extractivism or pollution, and on sustainable practices such as community textile production. Building on detailed knowledge of the local protagonists and issues, this optimistic, inspiring book jumps scales to national and international dimensions.' -- Joan Martinez-Alier, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona'This is an indispensable book that brings together the theory and practice of environmental justice. The contributions offer different ways for the concrete materialization of the changes needed for just transformations for alternative futures and make a rich account of methods for mutual learning between social movements and academia. A valuable resource for those committed to achieving environmental justice in the 21st century.' -- Gabriela Merlinsky, Instituto Gino Germani, Universidad de Buenos Aires, ArgentinaTable of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Our approaches and methods for engaging with transformations 1. Co-production of Knowledge for Environmental Justice: Key Lessons, Challenges and Approaches in the ACKnowl-EJ Project (by Lena Weber, Mariana Walter, Leah Temper and Iokiñe Rodríguez) 2. A Conversation on Radical Transformation Frameworks: From Conflicts to Alternatives (by Arpita Lulla, Iokiñe Rodríguez, Mirna Inturias and Ashish Kothari) Part I: Analysing transformations from and with environmental justice movements Section 1: Double Movements Against State and Market 3. 'Mirror, Mirror on the Wall': A Reflection on Engaged Just Transformations Research under Turkey's Authoritarian Populist Regime (by Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, Cem İskender Aydın) 4. Games of Power in Conflicts over Extractivism in Canaima National Park, Venezuela (by Iokiñe Rodríguez and Vladimir Aguilar) 5. Lebanon and the ‘Trash Revolution’:- Constraints, Challenges, and Opportunities to Transformation: 2015 Onwards (by Rania Masri) Section 2: From Individual to Institutional Transformations 6. Free the Keelbeek from the Prison! A Deep Analysis of the Individual and Collective Empowerment Within the Resistance Movement against the Brussels Mega-prison Project (by Jérôme Pelenc) 7. Raika Women Speak. (by Meenal Tatpati and Shruti Ajit) 8. Transformative Environmental Conflicts:- The Case of Struggles against Large-scale Mining in Argentina (by Mariana Walter and Lucrecia Wagner) Section 3: Enacting Counter-hegemonic Alternative Politics, Economics and World views 9. The Monkoxi from Lomerío, Bolivia: On the Road to Freedom Through Nuxiaká Uxia Nosibóriki (by Mirna Inturias, Iokiñe Rodríguez, Miguel Aragón, Elmar Masay and Anacleto Peña) 10. On the Cusp:- Reframing Democracy and Well-Being in Korchi. (by Neema Pathak Broome, Shrishtee Bajpai and Mukesh Shende) 11. Transformative Strategies Forged on the Frontlines of Environmental Justice and Indigenous Land Defence Struggles in So-called Canada (by Jen Gobby and Leah Temper) 12. Sandhani: Transformation Among Handloom Weavers of Kachchh, India. (by Kalpavriksh and Khamir) Part III: Lessons from ground up transformations 13. Towards a Just Transformations Theory. (by Ashish Kothari, Leah Temper, Iokiñe Rodríguez, Mariana Walter, Begüm Özkaynak, Rania Masri, Mirna Inturias, Adrian Martin, Ethemcan Turhan, Neema Pathak Broome, Shrishtee Bajpai, Jen Gobby, Jérôme Pelenc, Meenal Tatpati and Shruti Ajit) 14. Take-Aways for Environmental Justice Movements. (by Leah Temper, Mariana Walter and Iokiñe Rodríguez) Notes on Contributors Index
£22.49
Kogan Page Ltd Decarbonizing Logistics
Book SynopsisAlan McKinnon is Professor of Logistics at Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg. He has been researching and teaching freight transport and logistics for almost forty years and has published extensively in journals and books. He was a member of the European Commission's High Level Group on Logistics, Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Logistics and Supply Chain Industry Council and a lead author of the transport chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fifth assessment report. He has spent many years researching the links between logistics and climate change and been an adviser to governments, international organizations and companies on this topic.Trade Review"Professor McKinnon is making again a ground-breaking contribution. The greenhouse gas footprint of logistics is large. Reducing it relies on several mechanisms, because logistics involves many activities and participants. This book disentangles this complexity and proposes a clear framework for reduction. It identifies interventions by shippers, service providers or the public sector. The book lays the foundations of initiatives to come. It should appeal to a wide range of policymakers, academics and practitioners." * Jean-François Arvis, Lead Economist, The World Bank *"The UK's rising transport emissions are an indicator of the importance and timeliness of this book. The clear analytical approach, using the latest models - whilst avoiding complex language and mathematics - provides practical, evidence-based advice for a wide range of users, including logistics companies, regulators, politicians, policy makers and researchers." * Baroness Brown of Cambridge, DBE FREng FRS, Deputy Chair of the UK Committee on Climate Change *"Continued advances in logistics have enabled ever more globalized production of goods and services, bringing higher incomes, new jobs and more consumer choice in developed and developing countries alike. This progress has come at a price: the CO2 emissions associated with moving the raw materials, inputs and consumer goods are causing climate change with detrimental effects for the same populations that benefit from the growing trade. Alan McKinnon's book could not come at a more timely moment. We need to decarbonize logistics if we want to ensure that in the long term its negative impacts don't outweigh its contribution to global wellbeing. The book's analysis, combined with concrete policy recommendations to reduce the carbon intensity of logistics, provide invaluable tools for national policy makers and the international community." * Sergio Barbarino, Chair of the European Technology Platform for Logistics *"This book is a long-overdue and comprehensive analysis that goes far beyond explaining why we need to decarbonise logistics - a sector that is expected to triple in volume by 2050. It synthesises a huge and highly diverse literature and shows that there is no shortage of strategies and carbon-reducing initiatives. Policy-makers and business leaders, committed to bringing emissions down to levels consistent with the COP21 Paris Climate Change Agreement will find a wealth of technical information and practical examples to help then update regulation and design programs and action plans." * Wolfgang Lehmacher, Head of Supply Chain and Transport Industries, World Economic Forum *"The timing of releasing this book on the market is impeccable - with many governments currently grappling with how best to reduce their transport-related greenhouse gas emissions based on their nationally determined contributions committed under the Paris Climate Agreement, and the International Maritime Organisation recently agreeing to reduce global shipping-related greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. The book is extremely well compiled, building on many years of practically orientated research experience by the author on this topic. It is truly international in its presentation. I would highly recommend the book for transport policy makers, logistics firms, shipping companies, local government representatives, vehicle manufacturers, internet retail businesses, and IT specialists working in this arena." * Professor Ralph Sims, Co-ordinating Lead Author, Transport Chapter in the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2014) *"Decarbonizing Logistics will become the reference for all logistics professionals." * Rasmus Valanko, Director of Climate and Energy, World Business Council for Sustainable Development *Table of Contents Chapter - 01: Climate change: the nature and scale of the challenge; Chapter - 02: Developing a decarbonisation strategy for logistics; Chapter - 03: Reducing freight transport intensity; Chapter - 04: Shifting freight to lower carbon transport modes; Chapter - 05: Improving asset utilisation in logistics; Chapter - 06: Transforming energy use in road freight transport; Chapter - 07: Transforming energy use in maritime, air cargo and rail freight sectors; Chapter - 08: Decarbonising logistics at the national level: the case of the united kingdom;
£42.74
Johns Hopkins University Press The Rise of Animals
Book SynopsisAn essential resource for paleontologists, biologists, geologists, and teachers, The Rise of Animals is the best single reference on one of earth's most significant events.Trade ReviewIt's a beautiful book and the definitive account of the period... I love it and expect it to become a classic. -- Jeff Hecht New Scientist 2008 The Rise of Animals offers a much-needed avenue to communicate to the general public the past decade's exciting discoveries of Ediacaran fossils. -- Shuhai Xiao Science 2008 Recommended. Informed general readers; researchers/faculty; professionals/practitioners. Choice 2008 A one-stop shop for up-to-date information about this puzzling meagerie... non-professionals will likewise find that it is a fine-looking book that captures the excitement of scientific discovery. -- Gregory D. Edgecombe BioscienceTable of ContentsForewordAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: The Background: The Archean and Proterozoic EonsChapter 1. The Background. The Archean (4.5 Million to 2500 Million Years Ago)Chapter 2. The Background. The Proterozoic (2.5 Billion to 542 Million Years Ago)Part II: The Fossil Sites: Rare and ExtraordinaryIntroductionChapter 3. The Misty Coasts of NewfoundlandChapter 4. The Nama Fauna of Southern AfricaChapter 5. The Ediacara HillsChapter 6. The White Sea's Windswept CoastsChapter 7. Podolia's Green ValleysChapter 8. The Siberian TundraChapter 9. The UralsChapter 10. The Canadian CordilleraChapter 11. Beyond the Major SitesPart III: Other Evidence of AnimaliaChapter 12. First Trace of MotionChapter 13. The World of the Very Small: Fueling the AnimaliaPart IV: A Dramatic Crossroads—The Cambrian "Explosion"?Chapter 14. Body Plans, Strange and Familiar, and the Enigma of 542Atlas of Precambrian MetazoansBibliographyIndex
£60.78
Johns Hopkins University Press The Rise of Fishes 500 Million Years of
Book SynopsisThe book includes photographs of fossils from around the world as well as dramatic color illustrations depicting what those fishes may have actually looked like.Trade ReviewAnyone wanting an overview of '500 million years of evolution' of fish and aquatic creatures really needs to read this acclaimed text. It is the work of Australian palaeontologist and curator John A. Long, who works at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles. This is a second edition incorporating research from the past 15 years. This is not a work of popular science. It is a richly illustrated technical book that will be of interest to anyone wanting to know about fish before they crawled out of the oceans and started the long journey from amphibians to mammals. Sydney Morning Herald 2011Table of ContentsForeword, by Philippe JanvierPreface to the Second EditionAcknowledgments1. Earth, Rocks, Evolution, and Fish2. Glorified Swimming Worms: The First Fishes3. Jawless Wonders4. Armored Fishes and Fishes with Arms5. Sharks and Their Cartilaginous Kin6. Spiny-Jawed Fishes7. An Epiphany of Evolution8. Primitive Ray-Finned Fishes9. Teleosteans, the Champions10. The Ghost Fish and Other Primeval Predators11. Strangers in the Bite: Dipnomorphans12. Big Teeth, Strong Fins13. The Greatest Step in EvolutionA Classification of FishesGlossaryBibliographyIndex
£51.75
University of Pennsylvania Press The Invention of Rivers
Book SynopsisTrade Review"The river city book genre is experiencing a boom. Da Cunha's book, however, is more primordial. It is hat rare combination of imagination, originality, and historic and theoretical rigour. It is the culmination of intensely methodical, patient, and attentive work of design research; often conjured, but seldom delivered to its full promise, as it is wonderfully here. The Invention of Rivers is an essential historical contribution to our future. It dares us to move toward an aspirational postcolonial moment of 'after rivers,' when they are returned, epistemologically and methodologically, to wetness. Where the Ganga's Descent transforms from the locks of Shiva's hair in river into the 'infinite strands of each individual hair' in the form of rain. In the midst of global existential climate flux, I cannot think of a more compelling, urgent challenge." * Planning Perspectives *"The Invention of Rivers is a radical and timely book that will stimulate considerable debate on matters of the greatest contemporary urgency." * Arjun Appadurai, New York University *"A highly original argument and extraordinary piece of scholarship that comes at a time when rain is behaving unpredictably and challenging humanity's attempt to contain it within banks. It offers an alternative way of thinking about our relationship with the hydrological cycle and of living with wetness." * Lindsay Bremner, University of Westminster *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction. River Literacy Chapter 1. Alexander's Eye and Ganga's Descent I. COURSE Chapter 2. River of Rivers Chapter 3. Separating Ganga II. SOURCE Chapter 4. Waters of Eden Chapter 5. Calibrating Ganga III. FLOOD Chapter 6. Ocean of Rain Chapter 7. Containing Ganga Conclusion. River Colonialism Notes Index Acknowledgments * * * * * Preface Working in the Lower Mississippi River Valley in the 1990s, I began to suspect that the line separating water from land exists by choice, a choice not in where it is seen in a shifting and dynamic terrain but in the fact that it is seen at all. At the time, Anuradha Mathur and I were investigating the line that held the Mississippi River to a place in the vast alluvial plain of its making. We traced this line to the early years of European occupation and forward from there to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when it was enforced by a hydraulic regime of levees, spillways, jetties, revetments, and cutoffs alongside a culture of prediction and modeling to prevent flood. We glimpsed the possibility at the time that Native Americans with whom Europeans clashed lived outside this "landscape of flood." Their habitation was not necessarily on riverbanks exposed to the flows and floods of an entity limited by a line; it was rather in an open field of wetness that rose and fell. In other words, their difference went further than seeing the Mississippi differently; they saw a different Mississippi, a Mississippi that was not a river to begin with. To me, this was not a fact to verify; it was an opportunity to entertain in design. Irrespective though of what it was, it began weakening the grip that the river and by extension, the line separating land from water, had on my imagination. In the years since Mississippi Floods was published, our practice has taken us to diverse places, all of which threw the line between land and water into question, whether it was in a riverbank, a coastline, or an edge of an impoundment of rain. In India, I found that this line does not just result in the exceptional flood; it results in an everyday chaos that passes for the informal, kitsch, and underdevelopment. It did not take long to see that as in the United States the line transgressed is not simply a line drawn; it is a line imposed. Furthermore, this line does not simply separate water from land; it creates water and land on either side of it as entities that can be commodified and as such coveted, made scarce and violated. Indeed, it is hard to miss the infrastructural presence of this line beneath the many pressing problems in India that are generally attributed to poverty, a colonial history, overpopulation, illiteracy, and so on. It is also hard to miss the fact that people need to be taught to see this line, draw it, and respect it. In other words, the line between land and water is not taken for granted. For the last five years I have sought to understand what it takes to separate water from land on the earth's surface, to naturalize this separation, and to impose it on people who today suffer the increasingly drastic consequences of its violation, particularly by the rains of the monsoon that refuse containment. The outcome is this book. It is an appreciation of the river as a remarkable feat of design made possible through the drawn line, a line that has had nothing less than nature constituted for its success, allowing it to recede into the ordinary, the everyday, and everything. Questioning it is not easy. It requires more than a critical stance, more than simply seeing things differently; it requires another ground all together, one that offers different things. I found this other ground in the rain of the monsoon, a wetness that is everywhere before it is water somewhere (separate from land). It does not run into rivers, nor is it harvested to assist a river-inspired infrastructure of pipes and canals; it rather operates a world without rivers, holding in everything across air, earth, and life before, if at all, flowing to the sea. I present it in this book as a world constituted in another moment of the hydrologic cycle when watery stuff is precipitating, seeping, soaking, evaporating, and transpiring in ways that defy delineation. Its otherness affords a worthy vantage from which to engage the world of rivers. As such, even as this book is about the making of rivers, it is also about the ground of habitation afforded by rain. Rain is another ground for constituting the past, present, and future. In the Ganges I found an interesting case study of precipitation that does not seem to want to form into a river or perhaps even be a river. Like other names on the Indian subcontinent that are classified as rivers, it keeps defying its so-called banks, erasing efforts to control its course and nullifying plans to clean its watery stuff. Many will balk at the idea of questioning the riverness of the Ganges. After all, there is little doubt that millions of people worship the Ganges as a river, rely upon a river for their infrastructural needs, and describe a river that is the lifeline of a unique civilization. However, is it possible that they look upon something that was introduced to the subcontinent, something that enforces a particular language of habitation with terms such as land and water that were not shared by people who lived here? The question is worth asking given that people in India apply the name Ganga, which is seen by scholars as the vernacular equivalent of Ganges, not just to a river but also to a ubiquity that they venerate through the icon of a goddess, a ubiquity that may well be a rain-driven wetness. Indeed, there is much between the lines of texts, behind the scenes of habitation, and in the interstices of everyday life in India to suggest that this Ganga continues to exist. However, it does so in the shadows as an "other" ground of experience with a difference that refuses to conform to rivers and river-based ideas such as the city, history, and development. By questioning the place to which a name refers and venturing another with its own terms of difference, this book follows in the tradition of my previous works with Anuradha Mathur, Mississippi Floods, Deccan Traverses, and Soak. All of them put another place to a name. In Soak, for example, we presented Mumbai as an estuary where the sea and monsoon are insiders against the conventional appreciation of it as an island where they are outsiders with the monsoon an annual visitor. The latter was how British colonists saw Mumbai and how it continues to be researched, historicized, governed, and planned. Positing an estuary was not just for the sake of the city's future, which to us would be better served in the face of climate change and sea-level rise; it was also for the sake of its past and present, which we suggested is better understood on the complex and fluid ground of an estuary. Besides, from our engagement with Mumbai, it seemed very likely that people here see their place in terms of an estuary, terms that have been lost in translation to the language of an island. Soak basically reinforced the idea that emerged in Mississippi Floods and was confirmed in Deccan Traverses, our project on Bangalore, which is that European colonialism did not just impose another way of seeing and knowing place; it imposed another place. It is then with an empathy for irreconcilable difference that this book raises the possibility that India is a rain-driven wetness rather than a land drained by rivers, which is how maps, textbooks, histories, plans, ecologies, and everyday conversation project it. Unlike places we have sought to reimage and reimagine in the past, the imposition in question here reaches far beyond the colonizing events of the last few centuries to possibly Alexander the Great, who came across the mountains from the rain shadow of Central Asia in the fourth century BCE with a geographically disciplined view of the earth's surface divided between water and land with a line that could be drawn in a map. It set the stage for rivers on the subcontinent and arguably laid the groundwork for the waves of colonization that followed, all of which survived and thrived on keeping water contained with a line. Today, the authority of the line continues in place even as it is increasingly out of place in everyday life, particularly during each monsoon. Is it possible for India to recover an appreciation for Ganga's Descent? The phrase recalls the fall of rain. But as this book seeks to make clear, it also necessarily calls for a defiance of Alexander's Eye, an eye that awaits the clarity of a fair-weather moment to separate water from land. Rain and river, in other words, are not merely two moments in the water cycle; they are moments that begin two inquiries, two infrastructures, two modes of design. The more one is pursued, the more it diverges from the other.
£70.55
University of Minnesota Press Landscapes of Fear
Book SynopsisTrade Review"An elegant encyclopedic treatise on anxiety and its various manifestations, down through the ages. Tuan is an interdisciplinary virtuoso, ranging effortlessly over history, psychology, and anthropology. An arresting and beautifully documented study." —Kirkus
£19.79
Duke University Press Rubble The Afterlife of Destruction
Book SynopsisBased on ethnographic research in the foothills of the Argentine Andes, Gastón R. Gordillo reveals the spatial, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. For the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it.Trade Review"[I]t is the signal merit of Gordillo’s book to remind us of the value of the loose, but productive and fertile, horizontal connections and communities that make up the network of nodes and constellations that we too easily dismiss as 'mere' rubble." -- Jon Beasley-Murray * Posthegemony blog *“Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction is theoretically dense and richly illustrated with diagrams and photographs. The ethnographic detail is often engrossing, while the overall argument challenges heritage and regional specialists to engage in more penetrating analysis of how historic forces of destruction shape the world and add to the rubble that piles up along the way.” -- Diane Barthel-Bouchier * Journal of Latin American Geography *“Rubble is remarkable because Gordillo does not shy away from complex theorizing while also providing us with rich ethnographic storytelling. The result is a book that is as engaging as it is innovative, and which should capture the interest of a diverse audience. … dealing with the social production of space, racialized and ethnicized relations in Latin and South America, human-environment relationships, and affect theory. If the purpose of a book is to change the way one sees the world, Rubble succeeds.” -- Roberto E. Barr * Journal of Anthropological Research *“Both the idea of rethinking ruins and going deep into the Chaco region are original and a welcome foray into events and people that have been side-lined by official histories. ...Rubble gives us layers of history, of rubble, overlapping stories of indigenous identity and conquering violence.” -- Marcela López Levy * Latin America Bureau blog *“Rubble makes a series of generative interventions into the vast literature on memory and heritage studies in Latin America. Particularly rewarding for historians, anthropologists, and geographers interested in critical perspectives on modernity.” -- Mónica Salas Landa * Hispanic American Historical Review *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Constellations 1 Part One. Ghosts of Indians 1. A Haunted Frontier 31 2. On the Edge of the Void 53 Part Two. Lost Cities The Destruction of Space 77 3. Land of Curses and Miracles 85 4. The Ruins of Ruins 111 Part Three. Residues of a Dream World Treks across Fields of Rubble 125 5. Ships Stranded in the Forest 131 6. Bringing a Destroyed Place Back to Life 153 7. Railroads to Nowhere 169 Part Four. The Debris of Violence Bright Objects 185 8. Topographies of Oblivion 191 9. Piles of Bones 209 10. The Return of the Indians 229 Conclusion: We Aren't Afraid of Ruins 253 Notes 271 References 287 Index 303
£20.69
Fordham University Press EcoDeconstruction
Book SynopsisTable of ContentsAbbreviations for Works by Jacques Derrida Introduction Matthias Fritsch, Philippe Lynes, and David Wood Part I. Diagnosing the Present 1. The Eleventh Plague: Thinking Ecologically after Derrida David Wood 2. Thinking after the World: Deconstruction and Last Things Ted Toadvine 3. Scale as a Force of Deconstruction Timothy Clark Part II. Ecologies 4. The Posthuman Promise of the Earth Philippe Lynes 5. Un/limited Ecologies Vicki Kirby 6. Ecology as Event Michael Marder 7. Writing Home: Eco-choro-spectrography John Llewelyn Part III. Nuclear and Other Biodegradabilitie 8. E-phemera: Of Deconstruction, Biodegradability, and Nuclear War Michael Naas 9. Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness: On the Im/Possibilities of Living and Dying in the Void Karen Barad 10. Responsibility and the Non(bio)degradable Michael Peterson 11. Extinguishing Ability: How we Became Post-Extinction Persons Claire Colebrook Part IV. Environmental Ethics 12. An Eco-Deconstructive Account of the Emergence of Normativity in “Nature” Matthias Fritsch 13. Opening ethics onto the other shore of another heading Dawne McCance 14. Wallace Stevens’s Birds, or, Derrida and Ecological Poetics Cary Wolfe 15. Earth: Love It or Leave It Kelly Oliver List of Contributors Index
£26.59
Fordham University Press Radical Botany
Book SynopsisRadical Botany uncovers a speculative tradition that conjures new languages to grasp the life of plants in all its specificity and vigor. Plants complement and challenge notions of human life. The book traces the implications of the speculative mobilization of plants within literature and art for feminism, queer studies, and posthumanist thought.Table of ContentsPreface | vii 1. Radical Botany: An Introduction | 1 2. Libertine Botany and Vegetal Modernity | 28 3. Plant Societies and Enlightened Vegetality | 56 4. The Inorganic Plant in the Romantic Garden | 86 5. The End of the World by Other Means | 114 6. Plant Horror: Love Your Own Pod | 144 7. Becoming Plant Nonetheless | 171 Acknowledgments | 203 Notes | 205 Works Cited | 253 Index | 269
£26.99
Harvard University Press Daoism and Ecology
Book SynopsisThe authors consider the intersection of Daoism and ecology, looking at the theoretical and historical implications associated with a Daoist approach to the environment. They also analyze perspectives found in Daoist religious texts and within the larger Chinese cultural context in order to delineate key issues found in the classical texts.
£25.16
John Wiley & Sons Inc Urban Geography
Book Synopsis
£41.75
W. W. Norton & Company Microbiology The Human Experience
Book Synopsis
£157.70
Johns Hopkins University Press Energy Humanities
Book SynopsisEnergy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical and digital humanities before it, aims to overcome traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Responding to growing public concern about anthropogenic climate change and the unsustainability of the fuels we use to power our modern society, energy humanists highlight the essential contribution that humanistic insights and methods can make to areas of analysis once thought best left to the natural sciences. In this groundbreaking anthology, Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer have brought together a carefully curated selection of the best and most influential work in energy humanities. Arguing that today's energy and environmental dilemmas are fundamentally problems of ethics, habits, imagination, values, institutions, belief, and power-all traditional areas of expertise of the humanities and humanistic social sciences-the essays and other pieces featured here demonstrate the scale anTrade ReviewEnergy Humanities is an ambitious and stimulating collection that will assist the reader in understanding the importance of explicitly engaging with energy across the arts, humanities and social sciences. It is equally suited for undergraduate students and advanced academics who are interested in exploring the fecundity of interdisciplinary discussion and creative critique.—Capitalism, Nature, SocialismWhile the collection serves scholars in offering an organization of a specific context that is still emerging, and will most likely keep growing in importance in the 21st century, this publication will most definitely prove useful as a way to introduce students to the questions of energy as a specific subfield of the arts, humanities and social sciences.—Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human SciencesExplore[s] ways of thinking and talking about the environment more creatively, aiming to circumvent our denial and despair, so that we may learn how to dwell on the things that are disappearing, and to carry on living in the world they leave behind.—Clare Saxby, Times Literary SupplementTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Imre Szeman and Dominic Boyer, "On the Energy Humanities" Opening Image Set: Judy Natal Amy De'Ath, "Institutional Critique" Part I Energy and Modernity: Histories and FuturesSection Intro 1. Dipesh Chakrabarty, "The Climate of History: Four Theses"2. Imre Szeman, "System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster" 3. David Nye, "The Great White Way"4. Pablo Neruda, "Standard Oil Co."5. Italo Calvino, "The Petrol Pump"6. Stephen Collis, "Reading Wordsworth in the Tar Sands"7. Hermann Scheer, "The Visible Hand of the Sun."8. Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "The Frenzy of Fossil Fuels"9. Paolo Bacigalupi, excerpt from The Windup Girl 10. Margaret Atwood, "It's Not Climate Change, It's Everything Change" Part II Energy, Power and Politics Section Intro11. Timothy Mitchell, "Carbon Democracy" 12. Dominic Boyer, "Energopower: An Introduction" 13. Jean-Francois Mouhot, "Past Connections and Present Similarities in Slave Ownership and Fossil Fuel Usage"14. Michael Watts, "Imperial Oil: The Anatomy of a Nigerian Oil Insurgency"15. John McGrath, excerpt from The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil16. Gabrielle Hecht, "Nuclear Ontologies"17. Gokce Gunel, "A Dark Art: Field Notes on Carbon Capture and Storage Policy Negotiations at COP 17"18. Sheena Wilson, "Gendering Oil: Tracing Western Petrosexual Relations"19. Cymene Howe, "Anthropocenic Ecoauthority: The Winds of Oaxaca."20. Pope Francis, "Global Inequality"21. Ken Saro-Wiwa, "Night Ride" Part III Energy in Philosophy: Ethics, Politics, and BeingSection Intro22. Allan Stoekl, "Bataille's Ethics"23. Joseph Masco, "Atomic Health, Or How The Bomb Altered American Notions of Death"24. Laura Watts, "The Draukie's Tale"25. Timothy Morton, "A Quake in Being"26. Martin McQuillan, "Notes Toward a Post-Carbon Philosophy"27. Roy Scranton, "Learning to Die in the Anthropocene"28. Dale Jamieson, "Ethics for the Anthropocene" 29. Claire Colebrook, "We Have Always Been Post-Anthropocene"30. Karen Pinkus, excerpt from Fuel31. Reza Negarastani, excerpt from Cyclonopedia. Part IV The Aesthetics of PetroculturesSection Intro32. Amitav Ghosh. "Petrofiction: The Oil Encounter and the Novel." 33. Patricia Yaeger, "Literature in the Ages of Wood..."34. AbdulRahman Munif, Excerpt from Cities of Salt 35. Leslie Battler, poems from Endangered Hydrocarbons36. Julia Kasdorf, poems from Shale Play37. Stephanie LeMenager, "Petro-Melancholia: The BP Blowout and the Arts of Grief"38. Jennifer Wenzel, "Petro-Magic-Realism: Toward a Political Ecology of Nigerian Literature."39. Ursula Biemann and Andrew Pendakis, "This is Not a Pipeline: On the Politico-Aesthetics of Oil"40. Adam Dickinson, excerpt from The Polymers41. Warren Cariou, "An Athabasca Story"42. Barry Lord, "The Culture of Stewardship"43. Graeme MacDonald, "The Resources of Culture." Closing Image Set: Marina Zurkow References Index
£38.70
Johns Hopkins University Press The Rise of Marine Mammals
Book SynopsisMammalogists, paleontologists, and marine scientists will find Berta's insights absorbing, while developmental and molecular biologists, geneticists, and ecologists exploring integrative research approaches will benefit from her fresh perspective.Trade ReviewMammalogists, paleontologists, and marine scientists will find Berta’s insights absorbing, while developmental and molecular biologists, geneticists, and ecologists exploring integrative research approaches will benefit from her fresh perspective.—Birdbooker ReportThe Rise of Marine Mammals is an impressive introduction to its subject and an important contribution to zoological literature.—TLSOverall, this is a thorough review of the evolution of marine mammals, ideal for students of vertebrate paleontology who wish to study the taxonomy of these groups and for professionals who may use it as an up-to-date reference work. The volume is an excellent addition to paleontology collections.—ChoiceThis is a beautifully illustrated, comprehensive introduction to the fossil record of some of the most interesting evolutionary transformations within mammals . . . The Rise of Marine Mammals is a fact-filled, well-illustrated volume that will be much appreciated by anyone who is looking to learn about where, when, and how these fascinating animals arose.—Mark D. Uhen, George Mason University, Quarterly Review of BiologyThe Rise of Marine Mammals covers the breadth of marine mammal evolution while highlighting the key details. It discusses what we can learn from the fossils within a context that makes the reader feel as if he or she is part of making these discoveries . . . This visually stunning, yet informative, book should serve to inspire its readers—not only to give them a sense of awe and wonder at the marvelous diversity of marine mammals in eons gone by, but also to push them to preserve and steward the remarkable creatures that live in our seas today.—Ryan M. Bebej, Calvin College, Perspectives on Science and Christian FaithTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgments1. Setting the Stage2. The Oldest Marine Mammals3. Later- Diverging Whales4. Aquatic Carnivorans5. Crown Sirenians and Their Desmostylian Relatives6. Aquatic Sloths and Recent Occupants of the Sea, Sea Otters and Polar Bears7. Diversity Changes through TimeClassification of Fossil Marine MammalsGlossaryReferencesIndex
£57.60
Johns Hopkins University Press The Environment A History of the Idea
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewOur relationship with nature goes far beyond resources, amenity, or the scientific idea of an archive we learn to read. There are, as The Environment shows, ethical complexities in how we use and abuse the planet—and in how we frame its improbable riches.—NatureDespite the importance in recent decades of environmentalism, environmental protection, environmental science, and so on, there has been strikingly little discussion of what exactly the environment is. Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin examine the history of the concept as it has developed since the end of the Second World War, when they argue it took on its modern significance. The book is strongest in tracing the ways that changes in scientific institutions helped develop the modern idea of environment, as well as in its discussion of the ways that idea entered the popular imagination through works by Rachel Carson and others.—Environmental HistoryThis engaging and accessible book should be required reading for anyone concerned with the development of 'the environment' as a conceptual lodestone of both science and politics in the mid- to late-twentieth century. Moreover, it will be richly rewarding for anyone wishing to teach, research, or simply better understand the path dependencies and political dynamics of environmental issues today.—Local EnvironmentDemonstrates the power of history to speak into the present. A wonderfully succinct, compelling, and revealing piece of writing.—Australian Book ReviewThis is a highly recommended book that agricultural and rural historians will appreciate the significance of in tracing the history of the environment. It will be of interest to a wide academic readership, including historians of the environment, ideas, politics, science and technology. More importantly, this book deserves to be read by the wider public as it explains how perceptions of the environment have evolved relative to the history of the twentieth century. Understanding this history can inform contemporary responses to present and future environmental issues.—Agricultural History ReviewTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrologueChapter 1. Road to SurvivalChapter 2. Expertise for the FutureChapter 3. Resources for FreedomChapter 4. Ecology on the MarchChapter 5. Climate Enters the EnvironmentChapter 6. "The Earth Is One but the World Is NotChapter 7. Seeking a Safe FutureNotesBibliographic EssayIndex
£20.25
Johns Hopkins University Press Tree Story
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewTrouet writes that the purpose of this book is to excite people about science, and she succeeds by creating an engaging, credible work sprinkled with anecdotes . . . With this brief, accessible look at the wisdom of tree rings, Trouet draws readers into a narrative that clearly displays her joy for her work and offers some fun with word play.—Library JournalAn accomplished and globally recognized dendroclimatologist, Trouet is knowledgeable across diverse fields of science and is a talented writer and engaging storyteller. Drawing from a diversity of tree-ring research and interdisciplinary collaborations, Trouet chronicles fascinating examples of how dendrochronology helps to answer questions about past environments and human history.—ScienceIf you enjoy great science reads, add this one to your list. Now.—Nature's Cool Green ScienceTree Story is a sublime example of what booksellers have lately started calling smart non-fiction: sophisticated academic books for a broad audience (often published by American university presses) that are just a few notches above the yuck- or wow-factor of more generic popular science. The excellent clarity and pacing that Trouet brings to this fascinating topic meant I that tore through Tree Story in a day. If I added ratings to my reviews, this book would be a ten out of ten. Already, this is a very strong contender for my book of the year—Inquisitive BiologistA persuasive, entertaining explanation of how the codes contained in tree rings reveal the wide-ranging effects of climate change.—Shelf AwarenessTree Story gives readers a lively, sometimes visceral feel for Trouet's work.—Science NewsTree Story is everything I had hoped it would be: intelligent, accessible, witty, and captivating—a global adventure spanning millennia and embracing a bevy of unexpected topics, all resulting from the study of tree rings.—Washington Independent Review of BooksIn her delightful Tree Story, dendrochronologist Valerie Trouet obliterates the layman's notion that tree rings provide little more information than a tree's age. What trees can teach seems limited only by science's ability to extract the information.—Foreword ReviewsPart memoir, part field diary, part lucid and engaging science communication, Tree Story moves from the finest micron-level of individual tree rings to the deep geological time of the planet and the world-wrapping forces of its climate. Trouet's account of her career, far from what we might imagine to be the dull work of counting tree rings, reads like an exciting adventure story, complete with far-flung locales, the ridiculous macho pretensions of male coworkers, and the ever present thrum of the ancient magic that seems to emanate from the trees themselves.—Lady ScienceThe chapters spill over with information and would be overwhelming were it not for the book's organization, the images and digital illustrations, and the author's ability to share her scholarly adventures with such evident enjoyment.—Seattle Book ReviewEnjoyable and accessible. Drawing on a rich array of examples from around the world, the lively book is full of thought-provoking discussion of our relationships with trees and the climate.—Current World ArchaeologyTree Story is a work of science, of graphs and statistics. But Trouet recounts too the personal thrill of discovery, the camaraderie and competitiveness of academic science, and the arduous nature of her research.—The SpectatorTree Story offers a passionate yet clear-eyed introduction into the field of dendrochronology.—Cincinnati Public Radio NewsTree Story is well-written, often with great phrasing and much humour, and gives a welcome insight into the people and personalities behind the science . . . [It's] another example of great science communication, often dealing with quite technical matters, but in an accessible way for both the non-specialist scientist and the intelligent lay person. But it's not just about great story-telling, Tree Story has much of pedagogic value as well, and would make a great text for a plants-and-people course.—Botany OneHere, we are taken on a fascinating journey through history, as remembered by the trees of the world. Trouet weaves together stories from the field and the lab to demonstrate that there is far more to studying tree rings than counting them.—BBC Wildlife MagazineIt's all in the tree rings—and trees don't lie.—The Daily ExpressThe book has already been reviewed and recommended in many places, and highlighted as an excellent work of popular science. Here I would like to recommend the book to be used as a textbook for students being exposed to scientific ideas and methods, to arouse their curiosity and show them how diverse fields like natural science and human history interact.—Tree-Ring ResearchValerie Trouet's book is an excellent starting point to explore the relationships between trees and people and to look at the expectations and disappointments on the way to developing a way to communicate not only about but also with trees.—Edge EffectsIf tree rings are the scribes of history, Valerie Trouet is their chief scrivener. Highly recommended.—Plant Science Bulletin[Tree Story's] geeky enthusiasm . . . makes the entire book such a pleasure to read.—Rain Taxi Review of BooksTree Story should be well-received by a variety of readers, professional and non-professional alike . . . The book is well-written and designed, with good pacing that intermixes entertaining and informative narrative in focused chapters that are not overlong.—Maritime Archaeological and Historical SocietyIn this primer, a dendrochronologist explains how tree rings reveal the past via a science that exists 'at the nexus of ecology, climatology and human history.'—New York Times (New & Noteworthy)Table of Contents1. Prologue2. Trees in the desert3. I count the rings down in Africa4. Adonis, Methuselah, and Prometheus5. And the tree was happy6. The Messiah, The Plague, and Shipwrecks Under the City7. The Hockey Stick Posterchild8. Wind of Change9. Winter is coming10. Three tree-ring scientists walk into a bar11. Ghosts, Orphans, and Extra terrestrials12. Disintegration or The Fall of Rome13. It's the end of the world as we know it14. Once upon a time in the West15. Will the wind ever remember?16. After the Gold Rush17. The Forest for the TreesPlaylistList of Tree SpeciesRecommended ReadingsGlossaryBibliography
£15.68
Johns Hopkins University Press Science for a Green New Deal
Book SynopsisScience, not politics, can take us beyond the hype and headlines to forge a realistic green new deal. Since it was first proposed in the US House of Representatives, the Green New Deal has been hotly debated, often using partisan characterizations that critique it as extreme or socialist. The intent was not simply to fight climate change or address a specific environmental concern, but rather to tackle how climate change and other environmental challenges affect the economy, the vulnerable, and social justiceand vice versa. In Science for a Green New Deal, Eric Davidson dissects this legislative resolution. He also shows how green new deal thinking offers a framework for a much-needed convergence of the natural sciences, social science, economics, and community engagement to develop holistic policy solutions to the most pressing issues of our day. Davidson weaves the case for linkages among multiple global crises, including a pandemic that has reversed progress on fighting poverty anTrade ReviewThis book is an easy yet informed read supported by strong citations. The challenge, as I see it, is to get people to read Davidson's book and act.—BioscienceTable of ContentsForeword, by Donald F. BoeschPrefaceChapter 1. Muddling or Dealing?Chapter 2. No Tree, No Bee, No Honey, No MoneyChapter 3. Are There Too Few or Too Many People?Chapter 4. Manure Happens: The Consequences of Feeding Over Seven Billion Human OmnivoresChapter 5. Climate Change Viewed by a Skeptic at HeartChapter 6. The Luddites Had It Half-Right, but the Other Half Could Be Great NewsChapter 7. There's a Great Future in the Circular Economy Chapter 8. Whither the Academy? A Horse of a Different Color?Chapter 9. "And So, I'm Going to Work Tomorrow"AcknowledgmentsNotesIndex
£20.70
Bristol University Press Inhabitation in Nature
Book SynopsisRejecting the assumption that housing and cities are separate from nature, David Clapham advances a new research framework that integrates housing with the rest of the natural world. Demonstrating the impact of housing on the non-human environment, the book considers the future direction of inhabitation policies on climate change and biodiversity.Table of Contents1. Inhabitation in Nature 2. New materialism in housing studies: opportunities and obstacles 3. Inhabitation practices 4. Analysing inhabitation practices 5. Consumption practices 6. Production practices 7. Out of home inhabitation practices 8. Conclusion: inhabitation research and policy
£72.00
Duke University Press Coral Empire
Book SynopsisAnn Elias traces the history of two explorers whose photographs and films of tropical reefs in the 1920s cast corals and the sea as an unexplored territory to be exploited in ways that tied the tropics and reefs to colonialism, racism, and the human domination of nature.Trade Review"Coral Empire’s postcolonial jeremiad also registers the joyful endurance of surrealist visions of the submarine as a deliriously consciousness-altering realm." -- James Delbourgo * TLS *"[This] book shows that interdisciplinarity is possible. Elias combines the history of underwater cinematography and diving with attention to the surrealist art movement, natural history collecting, colonialism, and the history of tourism, and through this rich patchwork traces shifting popular interpretations of coral imagery in the early twentieth century." -- Antony Adler * Environmental History *"Ann Elias’ fascinating book couldn’t come at a better time. . . . Elias focuses on long neglected images from cinema, dioramas from museums, and illustrations from the press. She cleverly articulates them through a set of unexpected global connections that powerfully mobilise all the transforming ideas of empire, race, technology and nature at the time." -- Martyn Jolly * Australian Historical Studies *"This book is well written and the short chapters make it extremely readable. In addition, the book is beautifully printed, with black-and-white images embedded in chapters and their color counterparts inserted in the middle of the book. It is refreshing to see a book that relies on the reading of images paying such close attention to their reproduction in the text." -- Samantha Muka * H-Net Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I. The Coral Uncanny 1. Coral Empire 15 2. Mad Love 29 Part II. John Ernest Williamson and the Bahamas 3. Williamson and the Photosphere 49 4. The Field Museum—Williamson Undersea Expedition 68 5. Under the Sea 83 6. Williamson in Australia 97 Part III. Frank Hurley and the Great Barrier Reef 7. Hurley and the Floor of the Sea 117 8. Hurley and the Australian Museum Expedition 131 9. Pearls and Savages 147 10. Hurley and the Torres Strait Diver 165 Part IV. Hurley and Williamson 11. Explorers and Modern Media 185 12. Color and Tourism 199 Part V. The Great Acceleration 13. The Anthropocene 217 Conclusion 230 Notes 235 Bibliography 261 Index 277
£19.79
Duke University Press SelfDevouring Growth
Book SynopsisUnder capitalism, economic growth is seen as the key to collective well-being. In Self-Devouring Growth Julie Livingston upends this notion, showing that while consumption-driven growth may seem to benefit a particular locale, it produces a number of unacknowledged, negative consequences that ripple throughout the wider world. Structuring the book as a parable in which the example of Botswana has lessons for the rest of the globe, Livingston shows how fundamental needs for water, food, and transportation become harnessed to what she calls self-devouring growth: an unchecked and unsustainable global pursuit of economic growth that threatens catastrophic environmental destruction. As Livingston notes, improved technology alone cannot stave off such destruction; what is required is a greater accounting of the web of relationships between humans, nonhuman beings, plants, and minerals that growth entails. Livingston contends that by failing to understand these relationships and the cTrade Review“Highly engaging, deeply thoughtful, and beautifully written, Self-Devouring Growth helps us to understand the environmental dangers the planet faces not as something to be avoided or prevented, but as something to expect and to live through. Julie Livingston's thinking about environmental and other futures is a breath of fresh air and cuts across stale debates around economic development and environmental sustainability in a very original way.” -- James Ferguson, author of * Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution *“Julie Livingston's concept of ‘self-devouring growth’ will become an essential tool across many forms of scholarship—and for concerned earth dwellers across the planet. As Livingston puts it, “GROW! is a mantra so powerful that it obscures the destruction it portends.” Self-Devouring Growth tells of the failure of Botswana's public water system, strained by failing rains and pumped dry by mining and commercial beef rearing for export. Regarded as a success of development, Botswana is the ideal site for a parable of the Anthropocene.” -- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, coeditor of * Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene *"Livingston has written a beautiful book, which speaks from Tswana cosmology towards the complexities of global problems, and that points towards forms of activism that we can all take forward." -- Shannon Morreira * Africa Is a Country *"An imaginative parable about human society and life on Earth. . . . The author notes that everyone cries foul when poorer countries achieve a standard of living enjoyed elsewhere, yet the global inequality reflected in this complaint suggests the need for collective creative thinking about new forms of growth for life on Earth to survive. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." -- E. P. Renne * Choice *"I find self-devouring growth a powerful and clarifying concept. I’m more accustomed to thinking about the climate change emergency through numbers, like the temperature beyond which the earth must not warm, or the number of tons of carbon we can safely put into the atmosphere. Instead, Livingston illuminates our way of life. She is asking a lot of the reader: she is asking us to understand that many of the things that make us feel well, prosperous, and secure are the very things that are killing us. . . . It is deeply unsettling to live with." -- Emily Callaci * Dissent *"Livingston has forged a path into an anthropology of futures, one responsive to and reflective of the Anthropocene and the threats to human survival we witness daily on our ever-more vulnerable planet. She offers methodological and conceptual tools that will enable other scholars to grapple with futures, those that are unfolding now because of self-devouring growth, and those we want to imagine differently. This book is for everyone." -- Sharon R. Kaufman * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *“I like reading Julie Livingston’s Self-Devouring Growth as a push against the consumption of modernist time—that is, against the suspension of historical flux, imaginative possibility, and alter-social development.... The book so convincingly dispels efforts to reduce the planetary condition to a matrix problem begging for technological solutions....” -- Alex Blanchette * Somatosphere *“It is a testament to the distilled clarity and prescience of Julie Livingston’s parable of a book that its title, Self-Devouring Growth, can strike one immediately as both so true and suddenly so evident....” -- Abou Farman * Somatosphere *“[Self-Devouring Growth is] a book that offers an elegant and important argument about industrial capitalism and growth that is devouring the world in which we live.... It is a book firmly grounded in critical medical anthropology, which has for a long time dug into the political economy of health and the structural violence of capitalism....” -- Fanny Chabrol * Somatosphere *Only Julie Livingston could write this book because of the sources, sensibilities, and experiences from which she draws.... [She] leads us to think about the biggest burning question of our common era: What kind of future is possible when our ways of living are literally invested in our collective destruction?” -- Juno Salazar Parreñas * Somatosphere *“Through the realist genre of the parable, this marvelous little book discusses an interconnected world organized by ‘self-devouring growth’.... This immensely readable book will appeal to a broad audience of academics, policymakers and practitioners in international development....” -- Tanya Matthan * Progress in Development Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Prologue: A Planetary Parable 1 1. Rainmaking and Other Forgotten Things 11 2. In the Time of Beef 35 Cattle to Beef: A Photo Essay of Abstraction 61 3. Roads, Sand, and the Motorized Cow 85 4. Power and Possibility, or Did You Know Aesop Was Once a Slave? 121 Notes 129 Index 153
£17.99
Duke University Press The Government of Beans
Book SynopsisThe Government of Beans is about the rough edges of environmental regulation, where tenuous state power and blunt governmental instruments encounter ecological destruction and social injustice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Paraguay was undergoing dramatic economic, political, and environmental change due to a boom in the global demand for soybeans. Although the country''s massive new soy monocrop brought wealth, it also brought deforestation, biodiversity loss, rising inequality, and violence. Kregg Hetherington traces well-meaning attempts by bureaucrats and activists to regulate the destructive force of monocrops that resulted in the discovery that the tools of modern government are at best inadequate to deal with the complex harms of modern agriculture and at worst exacerbate them. The book simultaneously tells a local story of people, plants, and government; a regional story of the rise and fall of Latin America''s new left; and a story of the Anthropocene writ lTrade Review“The Government of Beans is an exhilarating read. Kregg Hetherington offers a brilliant theorization of agripolitics built up from the ground up through close observation of how dreams, schemes, laws and a host of small things (beans, trucks, measuring sticks, hedges, insects, traffic jams) transform lives and create new worlds. Anyone tempted by the idea that governing the Anthropocene means finding the right policy, or the right technology, or even the right kind of state should read this book.” -- Tania Murray Li, author of * Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier *“Stimulating, thought-provoking, and beautifully written, The Government of Beans explores what may be politically possible in the face of the overwhelming power of agribusiness and an ineffective and frequently corrupt government. This important and creative book brings histories, dreams, hopes, horrors, ambivalences, and practices to light.” -- John Law, author of * After Method: Mess in Social Science Research *“This well-written and important book is simultaneously a political and economic history of Paraguay, particularly its eastern part, and a depiction of a short historical period of radical politics on the part of the state.” -- Annika Rabo * Anthropology Book Forum *“Hetherington’s book The Government of Beans offers a riveting (yes, riveting) account of the expansion of agroindustry and soy production in [Paraguay].... [His] book offers a particularly timely cautionary tale about the possibilities and limits of government....” -- María Elena García * Public Books *“The Government of Beans offers a cautionary tale about the risks of using the regulatory instruments of the state to limit the violence of the state.... [It] offer[s] a refined interdisciplinary lens to study the intricate workings of soy and power in South America.” -- Daniela A. Marini * AAG Review of Books *“Recent state-society research in rural Argentina has produced important works on the politics of the GM soy boom.... Profoundly ethnographic and conceptually sophisticated, The Government of Beans is an excellent contribution to this literature from a Paraguayan perspective. This fine study deserves a wide interdisciplinary readership.” -- Ezquerro-Cañete * Journal of Peasant Studies *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii Introduction. Governing the Anthropocene 1 Part I. A Cast of Characters 19 1. The Accidental Monocrop 23 2. Killer Soy 32 3. The Absent State 43 4. The Living Barrier 53 5. The Plant Health Service 62 6. The Vast Tofu Conspiracy 70 Part II. An Experiment in Government 81 7. Capturing the Civil Service 85 8. Citizen Participation 96 9. Regulation by Denunciation 106 10. Citation, Sample, and Parallel States 120 11. Measurement as Tactical Sovereignty 130 12. A Massacre Where the Army Used to Be 144 Part III. Agribiopolitics 157 13. Plant Health and Human Health 163 14. A Philosophy of Life 174 15. Cotton, Welfare, and Genocide 184 16. Immunizing Welfare 194 17. Dummy Huts and the Labor of Killing 203 Conclusion. Remains of Experiments Past 216 Notes 223 Bibliography 257 Index 277
£20.69
Duke University Press Spacing Debt
Book SynopsisDrawing on ethnographic research in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Christopher Harker how Israel's use of debt to keep Palestinians economically unstable is a form of slow colonial violence embedded into the everyday lives of citizens.Trade Review“The first in-depth ethnographic research on debt formation in the contemporary Palestinian context, this groundbreaking work proposes a host of new ways for social geographers to rethink debt at multiple scales. Spacing Debt ambitiously engages theoretical debates across a wide array of disciplinary approaches and effectively links it with fascinating and carefully treated ethnographic cases and interview materials.” -- Deborah James, author of * Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa *“This is the first sustained treatment of the everyday lives of debt in the Palestinian context based on in-depth fieldwork and long-term engagement with the communities under study. Theoretically innovative and ethnographically rich, this groundbreaking study offers much-needed sociological insight into Palestine's neoliberal debt regime, while showing how Palestine as 'colonial exception' is a rich site to theorize social geographies of debt.” -- Rema Hammami, Birzeit University“Spacing Debt is an essential read for scholars of debt and finance, and for those interested in modes of theory-building that start from the ways in which people live and choose to narrate their lives.... Thinking of debt as endurance helps us see people living with debt as active agents." -- Enora Robin * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *“Spacing Debt is a thorough and important book that will serve as a reference on the livelihood of urban Palestinians for years to come. Ethnographically grounded and theoretically ambitious, the book offers an interesting read on courses in economic sociology, global development, and the like.” -- Lotte Segal * Middle East Journal *
£18.99
Duke University Press Breathing Aesthetics
Book SynopsisIn Breathing Aesthetics Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive capitalism, imperialism, and structural racism are embodied and experienced through respiration. They identify responses to the crisis in breathing in aesthetic practices ranging from the film work of Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta to the disability diaries of Bob Flanagan, to the Black queer speculative fiction of Renee Gladman. In readings of these and other minoritarian works of experimental film, endurance performance, ecopoetics, and cinema-vérité, Tremblay contends that articulations of survival now depend on the management and dispersal of respiratory hazards. In so doing, they reveal how an aesthetic attention to breathing generates historicalTrade Review“'Breathing is inevitably morbid,' reads the opening line of Jean-Thomas Tremblay’s exquisite new first monograph, Breathing Aesthetics. . . . By closely studying the writings and performances of Dodie Bellamy, CAConrad, and Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Tremblay is attentive to breathing’s knotty role in the space of queer life in how it ‘organizes desire amid crises ranging from the personal to the planetary.’ Similarly, by surveying the Black and Indigenous feminist respiratory rituals outlined in the works of Toni Cade Bambara and Linda Hogan, Tremblay asks us to consider ‘minoritarian models of collective life inspired by respiration,’ those that exist outside of and beyond mainstream feminist spaces of organizing.” -- Ricky Varghese * Los Angeles Review of Books *“Tremblay’s text is an exercise in exchange, in permeability. It begins with an acknowledgement that ‘breathing for’ is in the action of ‘I breathe,’ a ritual Tremblay learns from the poet M. NourbeSe Philip. This acknowledgement of human autopoetic respiration discloses the multiplicity and vulnerability of breathing. . . . Exchange, I have said, includes an etymological link to bartering. And [Breathing Aesthetics is] a bartering with the unknown amidst all too knowable crises." -- Laurel V. McLaughlin * ASAP/Journal *"Tremblay’s book does for breath what scholars like Zoe Todd have done for broad concepts like climate change, which is to push back against the Platonic understanding of said concepts that cannot be confined to a single, material form. Breathing Aesthetics pushes back on the idea of a disembodied breath, of air as a vacuum-like space that surrounds us. . . . Not only are we breathing together, our individual forms part of an amorphous and often chaotic whole, but breath is also being negotiated in a variety of different ways, the morbid and the meditative existing side by side." -- Margaryta Golovchenko * Visual Studies *"What is perhaps most revelatory about Tremblay’s intervention is that there is no call for a full restoration of breath. Notwithstanding its impossibility for minoritarian communities, a return to optimal breathing could only work through a guise of self-determined liberation that masks persisting violence against and estrangement among those whose lives cannot be extricated from conditions of 'breathlessness.' Readers of Breathing Aesthetics will quickly find that Tremblay’s assertion that respiratory crises are contagious between survivor and spectator in that the latter is made to suffer shortages of breath also apply here." -- Jennifer Cho * ISLE *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Ecologies of the Particular 1 1. Breathing against Nature 33 2. Aesthetic Self-Medication (Three Regimens) 65 3. Feminist Breathing 94 4. Smog Sensing 113 5. Death in the Form of Life 139 Coda: A Queer Theory of Benign Respiratory Variations 158 Notes 163 Bibliography 197 Index 221
£18.99
Duke University Press Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics
Book SynopsisIn Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Lisa E. Bloom considers the ways artists, filmmakers, and activists engaged with the Arctic and Antarctic to represent our current environmental crises and reconstruct public understandings of them. Bloom engages feminist, Black, Indigenous, and non-Western perspectives to address the exigencies of the experience of the Anthropocene and its attendant ecosystem failures, rising sea levels, and climate-led migrations. As opposed to mainstream media depictions of climate change that feature apocalyptic spectacles of distant melting ice and desperate polar bears, artists such as Katja Aglert, Subhankar Banerjee, Joyce Campbell, Judit Hersko, Roni Horn, Isaac Julien, Zacharias Kunuk, Connie Samaras, and activist art collectives take a more complex poetic and political approach. In their films and visual and conceptual art, these artists link climate change to its social roots in colonialism and capitalism while challenging the suppression of information about environmental destruction and critiquing Western art institutions for their complicity. Bloom's examination and contextualization of new polar aesthetics makes environmental degradation more legible while demonstrating that our own political agency is central to imagining and constructing a better world.Trade Review“Ever since the publication of Gender on Ice, Lisa E. Bloom has been one of the most innovative scholars in the field of polar aesthetics and the cultural history of the polar regions. Working with an array of creative art practices, Bloom demonstrates how new ways of feeling, seeing, and thinking are integral to the current and future social, environmental, and geopolitical predicament. This is a book for dark times, but it is hopeful, resilient, and socially just.” -- Klaus Dodds, Professor of Geopolitics, Royal Holloway, University of London"An impressive and fascinating study which prompts further critical discussions in the field of polar art. The book is a must-read for any scholar interested in the aesthetics of climate change and will have a lasting impact within the field of Environmental Humanities." -- Anne Hemkendreis * ArtHist.net *“Lisa Bloom’s Climate Change and the New Aesthetics integrates text with imagery to highlight problems, not isolated to one location or a particular ethnicity. . . . Close scrutiny of artworks which contextualize Climate Change brings problems and hopefully solutions to the forefront without verbally scolding.” -- Jean Bundy * AICA E-MAG *“This is a book capable of expanding a reader’s understanding whether they are drawn to it from the worlds of art, activism, critical scholarship, or some combination thereof. Connecting what is often separated, Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics is a vital read for artists, activists, and academics alike.” -- Alice Oates * H-Environment, H-Net Reviews *"[T]hrough well-chosen examples, understandable text, an extensive bibliography, and detailed footnotes, Bloom’s scholarship makes an important contribution to the literature for institutions with graduate programs and/or libraries which aim to include diverse views of the global environmental crisis." -- Barbara Ann Opar * ARLIS-NA *"Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics marks an important intervention in aesthetic and environmental criticism. The book contributes to a growing body of scholarship that engages with climate change not merely as an ethical injunction but as an unavoidable facet of contemporary life." -- Elizabeth Berman * Journal of Postcolonial Writing *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xv Introduction. From the Heroic Sublime to Environments of Global Decline 1 I. Disappearing Landscapes: Feminist, Inuit, and Black Viewpoints 1. Antarctica and the Contemporary Sublime in Intersectional Feminist Art Practices 25 2. Reclaiming the Arctic through Feminist and Black Aesthetic Perspectives 54 3. At Memory's Edge: Collaborative Perspectives on Climate Trauma in Arctic Cinema 85 II. Archives of Knowledge and Loss 4. What is Unseen and Missing in the Circumpolar North: Contemporary Art and Indigenous Collaborative Approaches / Lisa E. Bloom and Elena Glasberg 105 5. Viewers as Citizen Scientists: Archiving Detritus / Lisa E. Bloom and Elena Glasberg 130 III. Climate Art and the Future of Art and Dissent 6. The Logic of Oil and Ice: Reimagining Documentary Cinema in the Capitalocene 153 7. Critical Polar Art Leads to Social Activism: Beyond the Disengaged Gaze 176 Epilogue. Seeing From the Future 195 Notes 201 Filmography 229 Bibliography 235 Index 253
£19.79
University of Toronto Press The New Climate Activism
Book SynopsisAt the 2019 UN climate change conference, activists and delegates from groups representing Indigenous, youth, women, and labour rights were among those marching through the halls chanting Climate Justice, People Power. In The New Climate Activism, Jen Iris Allan looks at why and how these social activists came to participate in climate change governance while others, such as those working on human rights and health, remain on the outside of climate activism. Through case studies of women’s rights, labour, alter-globalization, health, and human rights activism, Allan shows that some activists sought and successfully gained recognition as part of climate change governance, while others remained marginalized. While concepts key to some social activists, including gender mainstreaming, just transition, and climate justice are common terms, human rights and health remain fringe issues in climate change governance. The New Climate Activism explores why and how Trade Review"Global climate activism today looks very different than it did twenty years ago. In The New Climate Activism, Dr. Allan has - uniquely - captured how the movement has expanded and diversified over time. She demonstrates convincingly why gender, labor, human rights and health advocacy groups have thrown their energy into climate politics, and why they have not all succeeded. Further, she shows how climate justice activism became so visible in the climate regime, and so important." -- Kate O'Neill, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley"This is an excellent book, packed with insights into the evolving global response to climate change and global governance writ large. In focusing on how and when diverse NGO networks are able to move into and gain authority in new issues areas, Allan is able to both explain the transformation of climate change from an environmental/economic issue into a social one and provide a general framework for better understanding NGO participation in and impact upon global governance. Her mixed method approach makes for vibrant and compelling accounts of labour, gender, justice, human rights, and health NGO networks’ experience with accessing and influencing the climate regime. The New Climate Activists is a must-read for those interested in climate change politics and the dynamics of global governance." -- Matthew Hoffmann, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto Scarborough"An important contribution to the literature, The New Climate Activism’s theoretical framework explains why and how civil society networks from outside the climate change realm come to participate in the UNFCCC, or not. Empirical evidence is marshalled to demonstrate the plausibility of this framework, which emphasizes both NGOs’ motivation to join and their ability to find the narratives, cohesion, allies, and institutional hooks to achieve recognition in the regime. Jen Iris Allan provides a valuable analysis helping us understand when and how civil society can come comes to matter within a multilateral setting. This is a significant work of scholarship that will appeal to audiences interested in global environmental politics and the role of civil society in multilateral fora." -- Thomas Hale, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford"It is now taken for granted that the climate crisis is a justice issue, one affecting the social fabric of human life on the planetThat the climate crisis is an issue of justice that affects the social fabric of human life on the planet is now taken for granted. Long before Greta Thunberg mobilized youth around similar ideas, several NGO and activist networks new to climate politics fought to bring social concerns – from gender, and labour, to Indigenous issues, and justice more broadly – into global climate negotiations. Some successfully changed international agreements and thinking, often despite resistance from more established climate activists, while others remained marginalized. Jennifer Iris Allaen’s richly textured study explains why some succeeded while others remained marginalized. ItsHer focus on NGO strategies to gain authority and recognition in multiple forums not only challenges conventional thinking on how change occurs in global governance, but, it provides the backstory of how networks of labour, gender, and justice NGOs transformed the climate change issue." -- Steven Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Global Environmental and Sustainability Governance, University of Toronto"Allan’s work is not only a fresh look at climate politics but a different way to think about the politics of global issue networks more generally." -- Charli Carpenter, University of Massachusetts- * Global Policy *"The book leverages literatures from international relations and comparative politics and will prove very useful in curricula on both subjects. The author seeks to prepare readers for engagement in activism within the climate change regime under the Paris Agreement, [while] also raising new questions with respect to NGO influence and authority." -- C. Wankel, St. John's University, New York * CHOICE *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. Forum Multiplying to New Regimes 3. Understanding and Governing Climate Change 4. The Reformers: Labour Unions and Gender NGOs 5. The Radicals: Climate Justice Now! 6. The Uninterested and Impeded: Health & Human Rights 7. The New Climate Activists’ Future
£21.59
University of Toronto Press The Sensory Studies Manifesto Tracking the
Book SynopsisThe Sensory Studies Manifesto explores the origin and development of the revolutionary new field of sensory studies.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Prologue: Coming to Our Senses Part I: The Sensorial Revolution in the Human Sciences 1. On the Geography and Anthropology the Senses 2. On the History and Sociology of the Senses 3. On the Psychology and Neurobiology of the Senses in Historical and Cross-Cultural Perspective Part II: Case Studies 4. The Modern Sensorium: A Case Study in Sensory History, 1920-2001 5. Melanesian Sensory Formations: A Comparative Case Study in Sensory Ethnography Part III: Multisensory Aesthetics 6. “A New Age of Aesthetics”: Sensory Art and Design 7. Sensory Museology: Bringing the Senses to Museum Visitors 8. Performative Sensory Environments: Alternative Orchestrations of the Senses in Contemporary Intermedia Art References List of Figures
£20.69
Cornell University Press Proxy Wars
Book SynopsisThe most common image of world politics involves states negotiating, cooperating, or sometimes fighting with one another; billiard balls in motion on a global pool table. Yet working through local proxies or agents, through what Eli Berman and David A. Lake call a strategy of indirect control, has always been a central tool of foreign policy. Understanding how countries motivate local allies to act in sometimes costly ways, and when and how that strategy succeeds, is essential to effective foreign policy in today''s world. In this splendid collection, Berman and Lake apply a variant of principal-agent theory in which the alignment of interests or objectives between a powerful state and a local proxy is central. Through analysis of nine detailed cases, Proxy Wars finds that: when principals use rewards and punishments tailored to the agent''s domestic politics, proxies typically comply with their wishes; when the threat to the principal or the costs to the agent increase, the Trade Review[German language review] * NY TID *Table of ContentsList of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Principals, Agents, and Indirect Foreign Policies 1. South Korea, 1950–53: Exogenous Realignment of Preferences 2. Denmark, 1940–45: Armed Resistance and Agency Slippage in Germany's Model Protectorate 3. Colombia, 1990–2010: Cooperation in the War on Drugs 4. Lebanon and Gaza, 1975–2017: Israel's Extremes of Interest Alignment 5. El Salvador, 1979–92: Revisiting Success 6. Pakistan, 2001–11: Washington's Small Stick 7. Not Dark Yet: The Israel-PA Principal-Agent Relationship, 1993–2017 8. Yemen, 2001–11: Building on Unstable Ground 9. Iraq, 2003–2011: Principal Failure 10. Policy Implications for the United States Conclusion References About the Contributors Index
£23.79
Cornell University Press Contesting Race and Citizenship
Book SynopsisContesting Race and Citizenship is an original study of Black politics and varieties of political mobilization in Italy. Although there is extensive research on first-generation immigrants and refugees who traveled from Africa to Italy, there is little scholarship about the experiences of Black people who were born and raised in Italy. Camilla Hawthorne focuses on the ways Italians of African descent have become entangled with processes of redefining the legal, racial, cultural, and economic boundaries of Italy and by extension, of Europe itself. Contesting Race and Citizenship opens discussions of the so-called migrant crisis by focusing on a generation of Black people who, although born or raised in Italy, have been thrust into the same racist, xenophobic political climate as the immigrants and refugees who are arriving in Europe from the African continent. Hawthorne traces not only mobilizations for national citizenship but also the more capacious, transnatioTrade ReviewHawthorne embraces a scholarly commitment to clarity and a citation ethic rooted in careful engagement with works inside and outside the academy. * American Sociological Association *
£22.49
Cornell University Press Bees of Costa Rica
Book SynopsisIn this richly illustrated guide, Bees of Costa Rica, leading bee experts showcase the diversity of bees in Costa Rica and the myriad ways in which they interact with flowers and people.Costa Rica is home to 117 bee genera and approximately 700 bee species. Focusing on the five bee families present in Costa Rica, the authors describe the bees'' general physical traits, foraging and mating behavior, and nest characteristics. Chapters cover the relationships between bees and other insects, profiles of plants pollinated by bees, and practical suggestions for bee conservation. With identification keys and more than 150 color photographs, Bees of Costa Rica is essential for anyone looking to learn about and protect these important pollinators in Costa Rica and beyond.Table of Contents0. Introduction 1. Bee Terminology 2. Biology of Bees 3. Profiles of Common Bee Genera in Costa Rica Family Andrenidae Family Colletidae Family Halictidae Family Megachilidae Family Apidae 4. Insects and Mites Associated with Bees 5. Relationships between Bees and Flowers 6. Profiles of Flowering Plants that Attract Bees 7. Costa Rican Crops and Bees 8. The Conservation of Bees
£21.59
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Culture of Stopping
Book SynopsisOur culture has no concept of stopping. We continue to build motorways and airports for a future in which cars and planes may no longer exist. We’re converting our planet from a natural one to an artificial one in which the quantity of man-made objects – houses, asphalt, cars, plastic, computers and so on – now exceeds the totality of living matter. And while biomass continues to decline due to deforestation and species extinction, the mass of man-made objects is growing faster than ever. We’re on a treadmill to disaster. To get off this treadmill, argues Harald Welzer, we need to learn how to stop: as individuals and as societies, we need to stop doing what we’re doing and say ‘enough’. We find it hard to do this because our culture has trained us to regard endless escalation as desirable, and we’re reluctant to surrender the material benefits of growth. But as long as the expansive cultural model continues to prevail, there will be no change of course in favour of sustainable and climate-friendly practices and lifestyles. We need a cultural model in which the beauty of stopping is given the recognition needed for the project of civilization to continue. Optimizing processes that are heading in the wrong direction only makes matters worse. Stopping is imperative: it is a human cultural technique that we must re-learn. Only then can we achieve a new beginning.Trade Review‘Contemporary societies are shaped by relentless activity. Even though we know that their current trajectory is unsustainable, we no longer know how to stop and turn matters around. Harald Welzer tries to overcome the opposition between individual action and systemic change by showing how a culture of “stopping” emerges from personal experience and life-course events. This is an enabling book: it suggests that much more is often possible than continuation on a career path.’Peter Wagner, Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) and University of Barcelona‘I’d be amazed if there’s one person anywhere in the world who agreed with every single thing in this book, but that’s not the point. The point is this: here, unusually, is someone who really has something to say. His book rings of honesty and unpretentious disclosure. And Welzer is absolutely right: at this desperate moment in human history on this fragile planet, every single one of us needs to think with full seriousness about what we want our own legacy to be. What is your life going to have been for? What do we want to be remembered for? As blinkered narcissists? Or as practical people who dared to dream, who chose not to desecrate their descendants and who were determined to find joy and love in the gloriously quotidian process of our grand little lives? This is the question that Welzer poses unflinchingly to every reader. Don’t read this book if you are not ready to look into the mirror.’Rupert Read, Co-editor of Deep Adaptation and author of Parents for a Future: How Loving Our Children Can Prevent Climate Collapse‘insightful, original, strangely entertaining and unexpectedly personal’The Earthbound Report‘A fascinating, challenging book’Operation NoahTable of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations I Away from here II Narratives of stopping, and of life III Obituary to the rest of my life IV An immense journey Notes Index
£15.00
University of Minnesota Press For a New Geography
Book SynopsisFor the first time in English, a key work of critical geography Originally published in 1978 in Portuguese, For a New Geography is a milestone in the history of critical geography, and it marked the emergence of its author, Milton Santos (1926–2001), as a major interpreter of geographical thought, a prominent Afro-Brazilian public intellectual, and one of the foremost global theorists of space.Published in the midst of a crisis in geographical thought, For a New Geography functioned as a bridge between geography’s past and its future. In advancing his vision of a geography of action and liberation, Santos begins by turning to the roots of modern geography and its colonial legacies. Moving from a critique of the shortcomings of geography from the field’s foundations as a modern science to the outline of a new field of critical geography, he sets forth both an ontology of space and a methodology for geography. In so doing, he introduces novel theoretical categories to the analysis of space. It is, in short, both a critique of the Northern, Anglo-centric discipline from within and a systematic critique of its flaws and assumptions from outside.Critical geography has developed in the past four decades into a heterogenous and creative field of enquiry. Though accruing a set of theoretical touchstones in the process, it has become detached from a longer and broader history of geographical thought. For a New Geography reconciles these divergent histories. Arriving in English at a time of renewed interest in alternative geographical traditions and the history of radical geography, it takes its place in the canonical works of critical geography. Trade Review"For a New Geography presents an incisive critique of twentieth-century geography rooted in an anti-colonial, Third-Worldist perspective, and makes the case for a new geography linked to global social justice. As the perceptive translator’s introduction makes clear, this volume is an important historical text that continues to hold significant insights for today."—Ruth Craggs, King’s College London"It is great to see this commented translation of a key work by Milton Santos, one of the most iconic radical geographers from the Global South. This book anticipated several critical approaches to the philosophy and history of geography and is now available thanks to the commitment of Archie Davies, who is at the same time a great scholar and a great translator, two qualities that it is rare to see combined in today’s Anglophone scholarship."—Federico Ferretti, University of BolognaTable of ContentsContentsTranslator’s Introduction: The Newness of Geography Archie DaviesIntroduction: From a Critique of Geography to a Critical GeographyPart I. The Critique of Geography1. The Founders: Scientific Pretensions2. Philosophical Inheritance3. Postwar Renovation: “A New Geography”4. Quantitative Geography5. Models and Systems: The Ecosystems6. The Geography of Perception and Behavior7. The Triumph of Formalism and Ideology8. The Balance of the Crisis: Geography, Widow of SpacePart II. Geography, Society, Space9. A New Interdisciplinarity 10. An Attempt to Define Space11. Space: Reflection of Society or Social Fact?12. Space: A Factor?13. Space as Social OrderPart III. For a Critical Geography14. In Search of a Paradigm15. Total Space in Our Time16. State and Space: The Nation-State as a Geographical Unit of Study 17. The Ideas of Totality and Social Formation and the Renovation of Geography18. The Idea of Time in Geographical Studies Conclusion: Geography and the Future of Man AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex
£21.59